Education: B.Bus.Sci Distinction in Law, LLB Magna Cum Laude, LLM Magna Cum Laude (all UCT) | PhD & Visiting Research Fellow (Leiden University Law School, the Netherlands) |Legal Scholar at UCT, Department of Public Law 2013 – 2024: Lectures and/or researches in, among others: administrative, constitutional, good- and open-governance, environmental law, as well as regulatory law in a variety of sectors including public procurement, health, housing and advertising; and private-law matters such as contract law, good corporate governance | Winner of a Record-breaking five (5) Law Faculty Research Prizes for producing ‘the most outstanding peer-reviewed, highly impactful legal scholarship’ |Professional: Admitted Advocate of the High Court of SA (practicing roll), 2024 | Admitted Attorney of the High Court of SA (2010- 2024) | Co-Founder of SA’s first on-line access-to-justice platform, www.SALegalAdvice.co.za, 2013.
Lauren Kohn is a South African legal scholar, practitioner, ‘socialpreneur’ and legal trailblazer. Her legal expertise spans public and private law, as well as regulatory, corporate governance, and anti-corruption law. Her scholarship in these areas regularly breaks new ground and has been widely endorsed by the courts – including South Africa’s apex Constitutional Court on several occasions – and has gained her international recognition as a scholar of top repute.
Lauren attained her B.Bus.Sci ,with Honours in 2004 (with Distinction; Special Field of Law, Class Medal for 3rd year Public Sector Economics) ; LLB in 2006 (Magna Cum Laude, Top Student); and LLM in 2013 (Magna Cum Laude, Top Student)(UCT). She completed all of her Degrees on scholarships and won numerous class medals and special awards.
Lauren’s PhD Thesis, through Leiden University in the Netherlands is entitled, “The Rise & Recognition of South Africa’s Fourth Branch of State and its Role in Corruption Prevention and Redress”. She has undertaken this research with the generous support of a prestigious Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Scholarship.
Since joining UCT Law’s Department of the Public Law as a full-time academic from 2013, Lauren has won a record-breaking five (5) Law Faculty Research Prizes within just a few years. This is the greatest number of Law Faculty Research Prizes ever won in the history of the Faculty. The anonymous judges have consistently commended her scholarship for its originality, insight, clear and compelling writing, and tangible impact on legal development, whether through judicial citations, and development, and/or law-reform efforts.
On matters teaching, Lauren has supervised and mentored numerous students, many of whom have gone on to pursue academic careers. She has obtained consistently excellent (anonymous) student teaching reviews. Lauren is well known in the ‘student echo chamber’ for being a ‘role-model’ who is ‘genuinely passionate’ about educating and mentoring her students. She has a genuine love for imparting her extensive knowledge of various legal disciplines with passion and accessibility, be it to student or other audiences. In 2016, Lauren received the high honour of being a ‘Dean’s Nominee for UCT Distinguished Teacher’s Award’ (DTA) – the most prestigious teaching prize at the University – given her unique and exceptional contribution to the teaching-and-learning project, and her consistently excellent (anonymous) student evaluations. Indeed, for her one course, ‘Constitutional Law ECP’, Lauren received 100% endorsement (i.e. by every class participant) for the award of a DTA, two years in a row. She is still in touch with many of her former students and remains committed to mentoring them in their vocational journeys. Lauren is a dedicated educationalist and a motivational speaker and mentor. She is able to weaves her practical knowledge of the workings of the law synergistically into her teaching and research, and vice versa.
As a mother to four small children of her own, Lauren is also committed to early childhood development (ECD) research and educational efforts. She has, for example, served on a School Board, providing pro bono input on, among others, legal, regulatory and teaching-and-learning matters. Lauren has, for several years, served as an editor on the Board of Constitutional Court Review. She is also one of the Founding Board Member of the Cissie Gool Foundation. As a believer in the importance of an open, free (and informed) media, Lauren often acts as a public intellectual by providing legal commentary to media outlets and non-profit organisations (NPOs), as well as various professional, and public-sector bodies. She has frequently been invited to give expert, technical input on governance and rights projects in South Africa (SA) and beyond.
Lauren has been Keynote Speaker, and presenter, at numerous local and international conferences and colloquia. In 2023 alone, and just five months after giving birth to her fourth child, Lauren was hosted at five European Universities where she presented her game-changing legal scholarship on state-capture redress and her original unifying framework pertaining to SA’s rising fourth branch of state, which she describes as the ‘Integrity & Accountability’’ (I&A) fourth branch. Lauren was an inaugural recipient of the ‘Women in Law (WOZA) Award’ (2019), in recognition of her work as one of SA’s top three (3) ‘Academic thought leaders and innovators’. In 2018, Lauren’s students nominated her for SA’s ‘poll of all polls’ and she was honoured as one of the country’s ‘Top 200 Young South Africans’ by the famous SA Newspaper, the Mail & Guardian’ (in the ‘Law & Justice’ Category).
Lauren is also a winner of the Dutch-led Initiative, #‘Inspiring50’ (S.T.E.M) for being one of the ‘Most Inspiring50-SAWomen’(2020) for, among others, her innovative approach to legal scholarship and teaching – particularly, her ‘clever pedagogical pivot’ implemented during the hard lockdown – and her paradigm-changing enhancement of access to justice in SA. She was also selected as one of twenty (20) ‘Influential Women Leaders from across Africa’ to participate in the Programme: ‘Leading in Public Life: Women, Influence, Power’ (2019), hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (‘KAS’) and the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance.
In 2021, Lauren received the highest Academic Honour at her level at UCT: she was inducted into the College of Young Fellows of the University – a testament to her exceptional contribution to legal scholarship and its impact on law reform in the country. Lauren was the only Inductee from the Law Faculty, the only female scholar in the cohort, and – quite remarkably – is the only Young Fellow in the history of the University to have received this honour with a PhD Project still underway. The Committee(/s) commended the outstanding quality, scope, and (tangible) impact of her research at the level where it really matters, that of (socio-)legal reform. In 2022, Lauren was recognised as one of a handful of candidates as a UCT Vice-Chancellor ‘Future Leader’. In September, 2024, Lauren received global recognition for her work as a ‘legal trailblazer, change-maker and pioneer’ – she was awarded the International Woman-in-Law, Justitia Award at the Palace of Justice in Vienna. The Laureates Committee received hundreds of nominations, spanning 31 countries, for women leaders in law, and Lauren is the first South African woman to have received this prestigious global recognition for her practical, scholarly, and social-justice legal work.
In August 2024, Lauren was admitted as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa (practising roll), having moved from the roll of Attorneys (to which she was formally admitted in 2010). Lauren has over 15 years’ experience in drafting expert legal opinions, undertaking legislative-drafting work, and providing technical legal and policy input for rights and governance matters (typically pro bono). Before transitioning into academia, Lauren enjoyed the formal practice of the law at Webber Wentzel, in alliance with Linklaters, where she worked for several years with a focus on public and various niche fields of regulatory law. Lauren attained Distinctions for all her Side-Bar Admissions Exams and the Top Result (in the Northern, Eastern and Western Cape region) for the most challenging of these exams at that time (2010); namely, ‘Court Practice’. While at Webber Wentzel, Lauren was involved in, among others, extensive legal opinion work, litigation and judicial reviews, as well as legislative and contractual drafting. She also co-pioneered several training programmes to upskill municipal (and other public-sector) officials in the fields of municipal systems law, public procurement law, administrative law, and good governance.
In 2013, Lauren co-founded the first-of-its-kind (NPO) SA on-line legal services platform, www.SALegalAdvice.co.za to enhance access to quality legal justice, and in an accessible and affordable way. She often spends late nights answering legal questions online to help those in need. Her genuine efforts to enhance access to justice have led to her recognition as a ‘legal pioneer who, early on, embraced “new working methods” where “business as usual” has failed and innovative “out-of-the-box” solutions have succeeded.’ During the 2020 Covid-19 ‘hard lockdown’, this online platform proved an invaluable source of pro bono legal advice for those in need. This was particularly so for women and children in abusive domestic environments, people facing unfair labour practices, small business owners, and (parents of) ECD learners.
Lauren is passionately committed to excellent and innovative legal education, research and scholarship, and to deepening the rule of law and constitutionalism in SA and beyond. Lauren plans to spearhead the development of a (NPO) capacity- and resilience-building ‘Academy of Excellence and Ethics’ as part of her ongoing efforts to enhance good public- and private-sector governance, create a platform for everyone to ‘level-up’, and help combat corruption proactively, deepening a culture of integrity and accountability by bridging the world of formal tertiary education and that of professional practice in a synergistic way that seeks to ‘build brilliance brilliantly’ across sectors and disciplines.
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Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Advocate (Western Cape Division, High Court); Academic (UCT)
B.Bus.Sci (Distinction In Law); LLB (Magna Cum Laude); LLM (Distinction); Current PhD Candidate (Leiden University)